Tag Archives: IPv6

Path MTU Discovery

Internet Access, Network, Routing, , , , , , ,

One of the mysteries for me in IP networks was the Path MTU Discovery (PMTUD) process. I’ve seldom seen any problems with the MTU at all. Fortunately, while troubleshooting some router issues, I captured several ICMP “packet too big” errors along with the original packets. 👍🏻

Let’s have a look at those PMTUD processes for IPv6 and legacy IP with Wireshark. Of course, these captured connections are part of the Ultimate PCAP as well, hence, you can download the most current version of it and analyze it by yourself.

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DHCPv6 Prefix Delegation on a FortiGate Firewall

DHCP/DHCPv6, Fortinet, IPv6, , , , , , ,

I got DHCPv6-PD aka prefix delegation up and running on a FortiGate. Yes! ✅ Configuring it is tricky since it’s not always clear which options to use. You cannot see everything in the GUI (it even changes depending on other options made later on or selects hidden and wrong default values), hence, you must set specific options via the CLI. I navigated around some bugs and finally got it running. Here we go:

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Joining an Active Directory: A Packet Capture

Network, Windows, , , , , , , , , , ,

What happens on the network if you’re joining a Microsoft Active Directory domain? Which protocols are used? As I suspected, it’s a bit more complex than just seeing a single known protocol like HTTPS. ;)

Since a PCAP is worth a thousand words, I captured the process of a Windows PC joining an AD. Let’s have a look at it with Wireshark and NetworkMiner. And, as always, you’re welcome to download the packet capture to analyse it by yourself.

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PANW: Dynamic Routing between Logical Routers

Palo Alto Networks, Routing, , , , , ,

How to route traffic between multiple logical routers aka Inter-LR Routing on a Palo Alto Networks Strata firewall? More precisely, inclusive route redistribution rather than a few static routes. –> Via iBGP through loopback interfaces. ✅ Let’s go:

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BGP Route Filtering with Palo’s Advanced Routing Engine (ARE)

Palo Alto Networks, Routing, , , , , ,

With PAN-OS 10.2, Palo Alto Networks has introduced the “Advanced Routing Engine” (ARE) with its “Logical Routers” (LR) rather than the legacy “Virtual Routers” (VR).

The Advanced Routing Engine simplifies operations with a standards-based configuration, which reduces your learning curve since it is similar to that of other router vendors.

The neat thing, as always: You can configure everything through the GUI. Here’s a basic example of how I’m using a prefix list to filter incoming BGP routes:

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Dynamic DNS on a Palo

DNS/DNSSEC, Internet Access, Palo Alto Networks, , , , ,

With PAN-OS 9.0 (quite some time ago), Palo Alto Networks has added Dynamic DNS for a firewall’s interfaces. That is: If your Internet-facing WAN interface gets a dynamic IP address via DHCP or PPPoE (rather than statically configured), the firewall updates this IP address to a configured hostname. The well-known DynDNS providers such as Dyn (formerly DynDNS), No-IP, or FreeDNS Afraid are supported. Since the Palo supports DHCP, PPPoE (even on tagged subinterfaces) as well as DHCPv6 respectively PPPoEv6, we can now operate this type of firewall on residential ISP connections AND still access it via DNS hostnames. Great. Let’s have a look at the configuration steps.

Spoiler: The DynDNS feature on a Palo only supports static IPv6 addresses rather than dynamic ones. 🤦🤦🤦 Yes, you haven’t misread. The DYNAMIC DNS feature does not support DYNAMIC IP addresses, but only STATIC ones. D’oh!

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Palo’s Mgmt-Intf is not usable with IPv6 anymore

IPv6, Palo Alto Networks, , ,

Wow, that was unexpected: With PAN-OS 11.1 the out-of-band management interface of Palo Alto Networks firewalls doesn’t accept an IPv6 default route pointing to one of its own data interfaces anymore. That is: In most setups, you can’t use IPv6 for management purposes anymore. “Works as expected.” Wow. Really?

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Optimized NAT46 Config on a FortiGate

Fortinet, Internet Access, IPv6, NAT, Tutorial/Howto, , , , ,

Johannes published a basic NAT46 configuration for a Fortigate firewall with FortiOS 7.0 some time ago. I run such a service (legacy IPv4 access to IPv6-only resources) since FortiOS 5.6, which means more than six years; lastly with FortiOS 6.4. It’s running for more than 100 servers without any other problems as we see them with IPv4 only or dual stack services.

But we weren’t happy with the basic configuration example by Fortinet. We wanted some NAT46 sample configuration with more details, that is: including the original source IPv4 address within the synthesized/SNATted IPv6 address. More in this post, after a short story about my way to a running nat46 configuration with port forwarding in FortiOS 7.2.x.

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DHCPv6 Prefix Delegation on Palo Alto’s NGFW

DHCP/DHCPv6, IPv6, Palo Alto Networks, , , , ,

Finally! With PAN-OS 11.0 a long missing IPv6 feature was introduced: DHCPv6-PD aka prefix delegation. For the first time, we can now operate a PAN-OS firewall directly on the Internet (the IPv6-Internet that is) on many kinds of ISP connections. Remember: To get a routed IPv6 prefix requires DHCPv6-PD (if you’re not a BGP-homed enterprise). Hence, without that feature, we could not connect to the Internet with a Palo directly.

With DHCPv6-PD, the firewall can receive a prefix from the ISP (commonly a /48 or a /56), while handing out /64s to downstream layer 3 interfaces. Here we go:

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DHCPv6 Prefix Delegation

DHCP/DHCPv6, IPv6, , , , , , ,

What is DHCPv6 Prefix Delegation? Coming from IPv4, you’re already familiar with DHCP (for IPv4) which hands out IPv4 addresses to clients. The same applies to (stateful) DHCPv6: it hands out IPv6 addresses to clients.

However, with IPv6 we’re heavily dealing with subnets rather than just single addresses. Again, you’re familiar with IPv4: For an IPv4-based ISP connection, you’re getting either a single public IPv4 address or a small subnet such as a /29, /28, or the like for your WAN interface. For an IPv6-based ISP connection, you’re getting a subnet which includes multiple unique subnets to be used for other layer 3 segments rather than a single address (with NAT on the CPE). This is where DHCPv6 prefix delegation (commonly abbreviated as DHCPv6-PD) kicks in: It hands out IPv6 subnets to routers.

Let’s have a closer look:

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Minor Palo Bug: ICMPv6 Errors sourced from Unspecified Address

IPv6, Palo Alto Networks, , , , ,

During my IPv6 classes, I discovered a (minor) bug at the NGFW from Palo Alto Networks: ICMPv6 error messages, such as “time exceeded” (type 3) as a reply of traceroute, or “destination unreachable” (type 1) as a reply of a drop policy, are not correctly sourced from the IPv6 address of the data interface itself, but from the unspecified address “::”. Here are some details:

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Verbindungsaufbau Deutsche Glasfaser

DHCP/DHCPv6, Internet Access, IPv6, , , , , , , , ,

Als netzwerktechnisches Spielkind beschäftige ich mich nicht nur mit den Netzwerken großer Firmenumgebungen, sondern auch mit meinem eigenen Anschluss daheim. Vor vielen Jahren habe ich dem echten Dual-Stack Anschluss der Deutschen Telekom mal auf die Finger geguckt – heute ist die Variante der Deutschen Glasfaser an der Reihe, welches zwar ein Dual Stack, aber ohne eigene öffentliche IPv4 Adresse ist. Quasi ein halbes DS-Lite. Kernfrage für mich war: Kann ich die Fritzbox (mit ihren mitgelieferten Presets für verschiedene ISPs) durch eine echte Enterprise-Firewall ersetzen, die ja leider nicht unbedingt alle Sprecharten wie PPPoE im Subinterface oder PPP IPv6CP unterstützen.

TL;DR: DHCP, DHCPv6-PD, RA.

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Meinberg LTOS: “syslog-ng” and the Observed Implementation Pitfalls

Meinberg, Syslog, , , , , ,

Meinberg, with the great help of Mr Weber, has implemented “syslog over TLS” in the LTOS version 7.06. The following report describes the general advantages of “syslog over TLS” and the implementation of it in the LTOS.

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Accessing IPv6-only Resources via Legacy IP: NAT46 on a FortiGate

Fortinet, Internet Access, IPv6, NAT, , , , , , , ,

In general, Network Address Translation (NAT) solves some problems but should be avoided wherever possible. It has nothing to do with security and is only a short-term solution on the way to IPv6. (Yes, I know, the last 20 years have proven that NAT is used everywhere every time. ?) This applies to all kinds of NATs for IPv4 (SNAT, DNAT, PAT) as well as for NPTv6 and NAT66.

However, there are two types of NATs that do not only change the network addresses but do a translation between the two Internet Protocols, that is IPv4 <-> IPv6 and vice versa. Let’s focus on NAT46 this time. In which situations is it used and why? Supplemented by a configuration guide for the FortiGates, a downloadable PCAP and Wireshark screenshots.

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